The one who wasn't going to lie
by Haely Potter
Summary: Steve Rogers wakes up unexpectedly a few hours earlier than anticipated, and Jemma Simmons is the intern on hand in case of an emergency.


A/N: I don't ship BioShield as much as BioSpecialist, but this has been written among my documents for months now. So I cleaned it up, and here we are. The idea was to have FitzSimmons somehow involved in all Phase One movies, and this is the Captain America one. I may or may not be posting the others... :S

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

It was like blinking, but not.

When he closed his eyes, the last thing he'd seen had been the ice field rushing towards him from below. His stomach had been in a tight knot, from the free fall, from the anxiety, from the sorrow, from the fear of death.

Next thing he knew was soft music with a soothing male singer, too quiet and clear to be played live or from any recording. There was also a female voice humming along to it, on his left while the music came from his right. The woman in the room, she was writing something, he could hear the rhythmic scratching of a pen on paper.

The room they were in smelled clean but not necessarily fresh. That wasn't to say the room was stale or musty, but rather like the War Room in London, with its mechanical ventilation.

Steve cracked his eyes open and blinked at the white ceiling. Ceilings weren't that pure white anywhere, even hospitals. Why would they be? Stains were much less noticeable on an off-white shade than a pure white.

Discreetly he tried to move his limbs and found them all free. So he wasn't captive, then.

From the corner of his eye he took in the woman, if you could call her that. Her face was young and innocent and she looked a little over twenty years old. She had a white doctor's coat over her normal clothes, a pair of dark blue pants that Steve had no idea what they were made of, a white blouse and a light blue vest. Her brown hair, a shade or three lighter than Peggy's, was pulled behind her in something that reminded Steve of a horse's tail, while she had wisps and slight curls framing her face that was facing half away from him. She sat at a desk, writing, as he'd earlier deduced.

He cleared his throat, making her jump and stop humming.

She turned to him with wide brown eyes and surprise written clearly all over her face, before smiling brightly. "Well, good morning, Captain Rogers," she told him cheerfully, her British accent strong and easily recognizable. "We didn't think you'd wake up for a few more hours, after all, it's going to take some time before you'll be back in top shape after nearly seventy years spent in ice."

Steve st up with a frown. "What do you mean?"

She looked concerned. "Captain Rogers, what's the last thing you remember?" she asked. Steve saw her swallow, like she wanted to ask more questions but thought better of it.

"I-" Steve began, "I piloted Red Skull's plane down in an emergency landing. There was ice below. I talked with Peggy on the radio to the end."

She sighed in relief. "Good, that means you have no memory loss."

She was about to say something more when the door opened, and in stepped a woman dressed like a secretary or a nurse who didn't expect to be cleaning up vomit or blood anytime soon. "Doctor Simmons, that's enough. You may have basic field medical training, but you are not a medical doctor, and now that Captain Rogers is awake, you should pack your things. Your SO is waiting outside."

Doctor Simmons blushed and started hastily collecting her things and stuffing them to bag.

"She can stay," Steve said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, keeping his eyes on the woman who was dressed like he was used to women being dressed. Doctor Simmons had said he'd been in ice for seventy years, what ever that actually meant, but of her clothes and music were anything to go by, times had changed. Yet this woman was dressed in the nineteen-forties style.

He glanced around the room. The room, the furniture and the technology was the same, from his time, except for the flat and square thing somehow plugged to the radio on his right. The bed sheets felt like they were army military hospital grade, meaning they were rough and stiff on the skin. Everything was like he'd expect it to be if he had woken up a week or a month after crashing to the ice, but... seventy years? That meant the woman had intended to lie to him and he had been lucky Doctor Simmons had been with him when he'd woken up.

"This is above her clearance level," the woman informed him, pursing her lips slightly.

"I'd like her to stay," he said and got up, resisting the impulse to cross his arms over his chest. It wouldn't help anything, except make it harder to fight and make him look like a petulant child. "_She_ didn't lie to me like you obviously intended to."

"Oh I'm sure agent Montgomery was just ordered to soften the blow of you waking up in 2011," Doctor Simmons said nervously, glancing between the two.

"I prefer honesty," he said bluntly, glancing at her. She was short, about as short as he had been before the serum, but now he towered over her with ten inches.

"That is noted, Captain, but this is still above her clearance level."

"So she is good enough to sit with me when I'm unconscious, but now that I'm awake, I'm above her clearance level? That just doesn't make sense," argued Steve.

"I'm an intern, good enough to assist and do grunt work but I'm not yet an agent, few more months until I'll be the youngest S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in history," Doctor Simmons explained. "It's been a great show of trust that I've been allowed to even sit with you, but there are other, more qualified people to monitor your recovery, as agent Montgomery said, I'm not a medical doctor. But," she added when Steve opened his mouth to argue, and ripped a piece of paper from her notebook, quickly scribbling down a series of numbers, handing it to Steve, "that's my number in case you want to talk or have questions you don't want to ask agents or if you just want to hang out. I'm going to be stationed here in New York once I graduate so it shouldn't be a problem." She glanced at agent Montgomery. "Or have questions about medical terms you don't want to admit you don't know."

She then finished packing, circled to the other side of the bed to the radio and unplugged the square thing, cutting off the music and leaving with a smile and cheery wave at Steve.

Steve turned his whole attention to agent Montgomery. "What is shield?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division," answered Montgomery calmly. "It was founded as a replacement for SSR by general Philips, Howard Stark and Margaret Carter as a global defense force against threats such as HYDRA and Red Skull. Part of our charter was continuing the search for you. The plane was found fifteen days ago in east of northern Canada and you were brought here. Doctor Simmons is one of the world's leading biochemists and the one who has the best chance of predicting if the super soldier serum will react negatively to having been frozen and what effects it might have on you. So far, she, nor anyone on the medical team, has not found any reason for concern."

That was comforting, Steve thought with an internal roll of his eyes. No reason for concern, except his lack of knowledge and friends, since everyone he'd known would be ninety or older, meaning most if not all of his friends were already dead.

"So... everyone I've ever known..."

"Are, unfortunately, most likely dead. Howard Stark was survived by his son, Anthony, general Philips didn't have a family, Margaret Carter married and has children and grandchildren, some of who work for S.H.I.E.L.D. The Howling Commandos had children and grandchildren before passing, some of who also work for S.H.I.E.L.D. Sergeant Barnes' sister Rebecca eventually had children and grandchildren," listed Montgomery from memory and Steve had a feeling it had been in her briefing for this mission to learn of the people he'd want to know about.

"Wait, you said Peggy _has_ children and grandchildren," he said after a second. "Present term?"

"She lives in a nursing home in Washington DC, her husband passed on fifteen years ago. But with her age, I wouldn't suggest visiting quite yet, her heart might not be able to take it," Montgomery cautioned, her voice softening.

Steve sat back down on the bed and covered his face. His friends were gone, his enemies were gone, even the barber on the corner was probably gone.

Then he suddenly realized something and his back snapped straight. "What about the war? Did we win?"

"Yes, the Allied Forces won and the war ended on September 2nd 1945, just months after your disappearance," answered Montgomery, back to the cool, professional agent.

"At least there's that," sighed Steve and slumped again.

The silence that descended wasn't comfortable nor uncomfortable. Rather, it was full of waiting and suspended energy.

"What now?" asked Steve finally.

"Now get you caught up to the 21st century," Montgomery said, like it was obvious. "We'd like for you to worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., but you don't have to. Howard Stark trade marked the name Captain America after the war, saying that the government's need for you was over, and since then, you've been gathering profits from toys, comic books and anything else that used your name, so you're now independently wealthy. Or, you could take up arts again." She paused. "Or you could call doctor Simmons."

Steve looked down at the piece of paper crumbled in his hand. _Jemma Simmons 0900-555-4386_.

His stomach growled, making him aware that it had been years, _decades_ actually, since he'd last eaten. He stood up and turned to Montgomery.

"Is there a place to eat here in the future? It feels like I haven't eaten in years," he said with a small, amused huff.


End file.
